St Patrick’s Day Parade

St Patrick’s Day Parade, An estimated 500,000 people crowded Saturday into central Dublin for the St. Patrick’s Day parade, a focal point for Irish celebrations worldwide and the start of the tourist season in debt-battered Ireland.

Bands from Britain, the United States and Russia joined thousands of Irish volunteers in the two-hour procession through Ireland’s capital of 1.3 million. It was the biggest of more than 50 parades and street festivals across the island.

Overseas, more than a dozen landmarks — including the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Empire State Building, the London Eye and Table Mountain in South Africa — were floodlit green in keeping with a holiday that highlights Ireland’s emigrant footprint worldwide.

But the holiday didn’t pass without trouble in the British territory of Northern Ireland, where extremists in the Protestant majority resist Irish celebrations.